4 languages at once.

[Baudelaire]

I hate being limited to only english and partial french speaking skills, so I'm going to learn Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and German, could learn so many new concepts at once bad for me? I can learn german no problem but asian languages seem like they will take a LOT of work. What I'm asking is

Is it even possible? I'm going to be traveling the world soon so I need to be prepared to communicate.

[enzenzz]

Better to just do it one at a time. Mandarin and Japanese some similar characters that are pronounced differently and also have totally unique ones. You might overwhelm yourself if you take on that many languages.

If you only learning this to travel then just learn the basic stuff and focus more on the country your going to. I haven't been to Japan but I heard that they are more hospitable and will try to understand what you are asking. In China, the more modern cities have some English speakers but most are still not able to understand.

[Antares]

Uhh, I think it could be a good idea but remember that the languages you want to learn are very close to eachother, so what I would do is learn the beginning concepts, words etc of the language first then start your next language. Especially with chinese and japaense, start learning them at different times.

[XxHaViiK]

It's a cool idea, but a bad one. Ask any school councilor and they will tell you to go one at a time. I'm learning Italian and German at once, and lemme tell you, it's NOT easy...

[Obscene Eyedeas]

好运气!

Chinese isnt too hard to learn but it takes a lot of work

[Jean Poutine]

I can learn german no problem but asian languages seem like they will take a LOT of work.

Warum denkst du daß, Deutsch lernen leicht wird sein?

Frag deinem Lehrer, warum ist Deutsch anders aus als Englisch. Ich denke daß, du überrascht wirst sein...

Trust me. One at a time. My major is modern languages, and I learned Spanish and German at the same time. I still say "sí" when I want to say "ja".

[Affliction]

im horrible at languages :P i tried to learn french but my school teacher gave up on me ill stick with english thanks :P

[DoveGreySands]

I'm sorry but i'd have to say this is a bad idea. You're much better off learning one language well, and then learning others after that. A lot of European languages are very similiar, and you said you're learning french. So i'd advise you to first try learning the romance languages, once you learn one, the others share similiar rules so you can pick them up easily;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages
As for Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and German. German may be the easier choice for you as it is a Germanic language, much like English. For Chinese and Japanese though, be wary. Their symbols may look similiar but they are different and some which look the same have differing meanings. To learn them you'd have to learn a new alphabet for each one, so doing both at the same time may not only confuse you but mix you up. So, in short, my advice is to learn one language at a time, try similiar ones after you've learned a new one, and it's gonna take a lot of hard work to learn an language with different characters.

[ibanezjoey1007]

I'm a bit of language addict myself. I'm going to start study Italian and Portuguese independently while studying Spanish in college. Also plan to start Russian after a while.

[Setzer]

well, I know italian, english, french, german, mandarin chinese, a little bit of japanese and next year I'm going to learn spanish.
Am I dead? not at all. I just raccomend not to learn japanese and mandarin at the same time, BEFORE start with mandarin, and THEN go for japanese, you're really getting in troubles if you study them at the same time, trust me.

[Kaius]

Don't bump please :locked: